Irish Examiner - 21/12/05
Plan to fill in harbour area goes against tide of reason

THE Port of Cork company recently released a
plan showing some outline proposals for the development of a container
port at Ringaskiddy.

The sight of a small diagram in that proposal
causes me some alarm. It shows plans to in-fill a considerable area
of Monkstown Bay in the lower harbour.

Cork does not need extra acreage to develop,
even as a major port. It just needs to value the resources it has.

That little diagram makes me think that the existing
resources at Cork may not be fully appreciated and that, possibly,
a strategic error may be about to be made in the port’s development.

Nature, while generously giving Cork a beautiful
and large harbour, has been more parsimonious in providing areas of
level ground near sea level which are also in immediate proximity
to deep water.

Such land is a prerequisite for port development
and at Cork it’s in short supply. Because of this limitation,
a large shallow-water area was in-filled to about a metre above high
water at Ringaskiddy years ago.

Much of this new land is now used for the parking
of newly-imported cars and vans. A nautical college has been built
on part of it and a toxic waste incinerator is planned to be built
hard by it.

Given the great potential of Cork as a port,
it is important that strategically priceless land like this should
only be used for primary port-related activities that cannot take
place elsewhere. Car-parking and incineration do not qualify: the
marshalling of containers does. Only when the existing acreage is
properly and fully utilised would it become necessary to make more
acreage by in-fill.

The ideal port location is of course at a triple-point
location where deep-water interfaces not just with the road system
but also with rail. Ringaskiddy is not at a railhead. But such a triple-point
location does exist in Cork harbour - at Marino Point. Coincidentally,
this large site has recently seen its resident industry close down
and is now lying idle. Surely this site is the most appropriate one
on which to build Cork’s new container port.

In heavy transport terms a railhead is a priceless
resource, and the transport of containers by rail takes lorries off
the roads - all of which has road safety and environmental benefits.

Amazingly, it appears that this superb site may
be about to be passed over in favour of an intertidal mud bank in
Monkstown Bay.

The development of Cork’s downstream container
port should be at Marino Point and, if and when that facility is at
full capacity, then the existing land resource at Ringaskiddy should
be developed. Containers could be readily shuttled between these two
nodes on self-propelled lighters.

Cork’s location - at the point where the
North Atlantic meets western Europe - gives it huge potential as a
port. This suggests that the existing upstream container port facilities
- with the railhead at Tivoli - are also best retained in public ownership
for the future of the port.

Sensible Corkonians will naturally approve of
the correct and careful strategic development of their harbour and
the benefits of increased trade. But they have a responsibility to
disapprove of developments that are simply wrong.

Regrettably, from toxic incinerators to the possibility
of poorly thought-out container port development, Cork’s lower
harbour may be setting up to bear - long into the future - the bitter
fruits of today’s shabby strategic thinking.